In a previous blog I said I wanted to gain a different perspective of how a production is created and get a chance to look at the more administrative and finical side of the creative process. I was lucky enough to find a role earlier this month working with Makeshift Wings Theatre, a new Bristol based company whose founder happened to have gone to university with my girlfriend and the writer of their production had lived with her a few years ago. Weird nepotistic connection aside I only was lucky that they were looking for someone marketing and publicity work to promote the Bristol run of their new asburdist work about identity, Subject to Requirement. Lucky for me I have done small bits of it before.

I had done some (clumsily and less-extensively) work on the marketing and publicity before while a part of last year’s Bristol Shakespeare Festival and before that when directing plays back at university I had to oversee, help and take part in promoting the plays. This time I took and found some useful advice on a blog by American theatre company Second Wind Theatre about how a professional company can look to promote their play in an effective, yet cost-free way that would take advantage of the web, local news and events publications and radio stations. Along with this I also looked to expand my knowledge of promotion via social media by using the contacts I had made over the last few years in the Bristol theatre scene to encourage word of mouth about the performance.

Makeshift Wings Artistic Director, Amy Bethan Evans comments on my work with the company:
James Satynings

However, I decided to make Makeshift Wings marketing and publicity future a lot easier by compiling a database on an Excel spreadsheet of phone numbers and email addresses of potential promotional contacts for the group to use to promote future productions. Additionally as well on the three nights of performance I also was involved overseeing a post-show Q and A session with the cast and crew, which I filmed on the second night of the show in the hope of editing and giving the footage back to Makeshift Wings to use for additional promotional material in the future. The footage however, was not usable in the end due to technical problems with the sound equipment.

In terms of time I spent a few hours each day in early September putting the initial database list together finding contact details about different promotional outlets, primarily phone numbers and email addresses. At times I found through my friendship groups helped me to directly contact the relevant people either over social media, like Facebook, or by telling them about me and the production. It kind helped me learn scarily how close I am to contacting people in positions of power in creative fields that I am want to be involved with. This I will especially remember in my future plans after the Future Producers. It also allowed me to test my people skills with people in a different way to my day job as a Teaching Assistant in that I was acting as a kind of sells person to sell the production’s worth.

About three-two weeks before the show I spent a lot of time going over and over again drafting the perfect introductory letter/email that accompany the attached promotional information about the company and play. The main things I gained from this was an appreciation for was the importance of making that all important first contact, whether it was by phone call or email to present myself and the production in the best light.

As a dyslexic, this was painful as I scanned the email three or four times to make sure I was addressing the right people, getting the information completely accurate and making sure I sold the play in the right light to the selected audience at that moment. I also found that while emailing responses that I had to double-check that I had attached the right attachments. I needed to as on more than one occasion I was so close to sending out a copy of the script to a reviewer.

Along with this came the persistence to continually figure out where the information I needed would be on the most trickiest of websites. It sounds easy spending time looking to find contact details on websites as you usually expect the details you need to be on the ‘contact’, ‘contact us’ or ‘about us’ pages. Surprising the lengths certain radio stations and publications will go to make it hard for you to update them about events you are running that might interest them made the job quite frustrating. It’s a skill that I can now do without thinking I can do almost mechanical without even thinking.

Probably the greatest things I gained was learning though from other people’s experiences, especially Makeshift Wings’ Artistic Director, Amy Bethan Evans, who I chose to interview as professional in a creative field that most interests me. Amy is a young Royal Court writer who is an actress, writer and producer who’s response to my question about the difficulties in setting up your own theatre company surprised me. She started the company because she wanted to produce and have her own work performed and that her experiences with other theatre companies meant that setting up Makeshift Wings was not as difficult as I would have expected it to be!

The video for our interview can be found here!

Similarly also David Lewis, Subject to Requirement‘s writer, also helped me to also answered some unanswered questions in the back of my head related to my own desire to be be a playwright and producer.

From Amy the main thing that I took away from both meeting and talking to her on and off camera was the realization that I if I want to have my writing produced and even more importantly, if I want to produce it myself, I am capable of doing so. With Makeshift Wings she set up the company initially with the main purpose of producing her own play. The company’s survival and second production came about primarily due to her friendship and mentoring of David Lewis who she had promised to help get Subject to Requirement to the Edinburgh Fringe.

And while she described some of the hard problems she had doing it, her answer towards my question of what obstacles stood in her way were self-created. Although she noted the hardship with running the company by herself it has and continues to be a labour of love that has benefited from a mixture of luck, connections with the UWE Drama Society and a CV that has been built up over time on the basis of trying everything to get a foot in the door.

For David also as a writer he credited Amy wholeheartedly as the reason he is a writer and for helping to produce the play and fulfilling her promise to take the show to Edinburgh. What I have gained from talking and witnessing the connection between both of these writers and theatre-makers both behind the scenes and during the Q and A sessions I chaired was how their friendship and bond has helped define the play and the company at this stage of it’s life. Friends, contacts or those who support you can make the load a lot easier to carry and can help you put on a production.

What it has shown me about a potential career path as a writer within the theatre and as a professional who wants to run a theatre company is that the main things I need is the courage and the willingness to give the appropriate amount of time to such an endeavour to take the next step to produce my own work and create my own organisation. Likewise to involve my friends and call in favours from those who want to see me succeed.

Yet what my research on how to set up your own theatre company over the last few days has shown is that realistically, given my current plans to apply for teacher training for next year, if I do decide to set up a company in the foreseeable future there are a lot of things I will need to consider.

I have spent several hours over the last few days reading testimonies, advice articles and tips from those who have set up their own theatre companies at all levels from sites such as Creative-Choice, Ideastap, The Stage and a very useful website called StartATheatreCompany.com. The main influence and insight that I have gained from these sites has been about considering that to start a theatre company I need to consider its purpose, direction but also long-term how do I want the company to appear to others.

At it’s core I need to know what I want my company to be, its ethos in terms of what I showcase and if it will always be constant in terms of the types of theatre or plays it produces or if the company evolves what will consistently link each stage of development together in a way that does not take away from the groups history or alienate it’s target audience. I also need to consider how I deal with the balance between creating a theatre company for myself and own wants and consider the business aspects of it and the demands this creates for productions.

These sources of information, along wtih information I found on other websites like I Can Guide You, Gomito Productions and Red Table Theatre helped me to consider the business aspects of creating a theatre production company more so than the creative parts that of writing, directing and putting a production together that I love. At first this made me feel overwhelmed given all teh varies that need to be considered to create a successful theatre company. I have since learnt from working on the BFI Gothic season how even these aspects of theatre can used to showcase your creativity in terms of forging an image and path for your theatre company and something that can be shared out with those who you work closely with.

It guided my research to search up to see if any of the theatre-makers I have worked with in the past also had something to say about creating a theatre company and lead to me finding this article on the blog Is the Director Dead. I worked with Phillip last year on this same production of Alls Well That Ends Well and reading what he has to say about the ethos and his own drive behind own theatre company, Gentleman Jack, a company specialising in performing underperformed and under-loved plays has also helped to remind me that overall it is a passion and the drive to produce what you want to do that drives all aspects of managing a theatre company. Phillip is also a teacher, which is a career I also want, but he, like Amy who also has a full-time job, are still able to follow their passion for theatre and know the direction they want to take their companies.

I think my experiences working in theatre up to and beyond working with Makeshift Wings has helped me to learn that if I do want a career in teaching as well as theatre-maker, all I need to do is sit down, decide on my goals, the direction I want to move in, find some friends and backers and get to it. Yet for the moment, I am currently applying for a PGCE and at this moment my desire to be a teacher is more important and therefore starting my own theatre company, at least on a grand scale is not possible. But in terms of career development, I will continue to do what I am currently doing helping out on shows and productions when and where I can to gain experience and contacts and over time decide on what I would like to produce most with a theatre company.

In the meantime I can continue researching, writing down and fleshing out my thoughts on the theatre company I want to create and depending on circumstances, this experience has made me consider creating a small theate production of some of my short-plays which I could produce in the summer holidays. The idea of the production is based on a handful of pieces I have about relationships, entitled ‘Love and Other Venereal Diseases’, could allow me to put into practice all the skills, knowledge and contacts I have gained thus far in my theatrical career.